Agents of SHIELD: S3 E21 "Absolution/Ascension Part 1" 5/17/16

Cafe Society
1

Poor swerve at the start, but it’s to be expected.

Fitz tries acting warmups. “Stop that!”
They just hand out kill codes from the sidewalk?! And just number/letters on a piece of plastic?

Radcliff: “Please, don’t do those things.”

YoYo: “This isn’t about super speed, this is about your turtle speed.”

How many swerve attempts can there be with that cross?

Radcliff: “We’re going to call you Ronald. And we’re going to call you Ronald 2.”

Daisy angst is like fingernails on a chalk

YoYo: Good thing we brought the little small plane to carry them.

Radcliff and YoYo have the best lines in the show so far. And I like the characters the most. So that means at least one of them will die soon.

Talbot: Like betting on Wrestlemania stupid.

Talbot: And I can tell by your beady little eyes that you’re a worm.

They special order hydraulics parts to keep the base safe? I wonder if they have Amazon Prime.

Simmons: Snorkeling!

More cross swerves. Fitz even has the jacket.

Mack: What? I have dimensions.

The base is underground, what windows were being closed off in Coulson’s office?

Coulson: What’s Professor Von Thurgs Compiler theory. Simmons: It’s complicated.

Daisy: Please, take me back. Hive: Interesting.

Well, lots of stuff happened. Not sure who’s in the Quinjet yet.

2

And now Part 2, I didn’t realize they were both on tonight.

3

Forgot, great acting by Dalton when Hive’s memory was messed up.

YoYo sacrificed herself for Mack, actually really well done.

Fitz and May, way to go!

Why does a SHIELD base have an ancient furnace? Is it still running from the SSR days?

Zephyr, not quinjet. Got it.

Radcliff: It’s not a hunch, it’s science! It’s a science hunch.

Coulson: You better follow him, he has no idea where he’s going.

Daisy is pathetically high maintenance. It’s beyond annoying and venturing into awful territory.

Good job Fitz. And Daisy is on the team. And another cross/jacket swerve.

YoYo: Just say SHIELD.

Breaking the window off screen saved on the SFX budget.

“Even the ladies?”

OK, now I’m more sure than ever that it’s not going to be Daisy. She thinks she’s seen the future, and that means it can’t possibly be an accurate interpretation.

And Coulson has the same jacket. Goodie.

“Help me Obi-wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” - Loved that.

Teen angst again, times 2. This is annoying. At least Lincoln plans to leave the team.

Argh!! Why all the exposition? We’re not idiots!

Shotgun axe!

Oh, thank God, it’s Lincoln. At least one good thing is coming from this. I didn’t really like his character but I didn’t hate him as much as everyone else seemed to. I wonder if we’ll find Hive’s body? It is the comics.

Hrmm, the physics of the space travel doesn’t seem to work like that. Hive is rather calm about the whole thing. The cross is bit heavy handed symbolism.

Brett Dalton is the best actor on the show.

And Daisy has gone rogue. Tied back to the guy who gave her the vision. And she’s a super agent, living in the shadows and causing destruction while being Robin Hood?

Epilogue:

Leopold? Did we know that?
At least Radcliff will be back. How could this possibly go wrong?

4

I’ll be watching on delay (NBA playoffs, yo), but I’m icing my glass as we “speak.”

5

Quite the rollercoaster ride for me. I stopped watching the show two seasons ago, but I literally had nothing else to do and saw it was the finale so figured what the heck. I went from thinking “Damn, it’s actually gotten better” to “By the Evil Eye of Camalopartis, it’s still stupid as hell.” By the time they got to La Femme Daisy I’d been rolling my eyes so often I think I changed my glasses prescription.

6

Who is the new director? I’m thinking May.

And the ‘trap’ for Daisy was dumb even for TV or this show. Certainly they have agents Daisy doesn’t know by sight that could be in the park (or in vehicles that could get there faster than Coulson and Mack can run down a couple flights of stairs and get in a car).

7

A nitpick I have with every instance of nuclear disarmament is that any bomb that wasn’t specifically made to be indefusible, can basically just be disassembled (or torn apart) and it will fail to function. A warhead isn’t going to have any safety features. By the time it gets to its destination, it’s traveling at several hundred (or thousand?) miles per hour, so you don’t really need to make it hard to defuse. A cylinder of plutonium (or whatever) isn’t inherently explosive, and the explosives around it won’t go off without being triggered by a blasting cap. Hive could have punched the nuke into non-existence or taken over Sparky and had him take it out.

His evil plot would have been foiled, but there was no reason to get exploded.

But, he did seem to be satisfied that maybe humanity was worth leaving alone, if someone like Lincoln would die for them, and he seemed willing to be released from life, so I’m not too fussed about his inaction.

Overall, it was a good season ending.

Hive was a pretty good villain. He’s got the emotional connection with the major players and Dalton does a good job as an actor (as you noted). But the whole “6 months later” stuff looked like a load of crap. Daisy’s goth outfit looked about as fake as anything and there’s no way a guy who experiments on humans, allowed himself to be coerced by the bad guy without hostages being involved, and has no military/spy background becomes the director of SHIELD.

John Hannah may be a good actor and a good choice for a central role, but everything about the flashforward spelled stupid.

8

I saw this as a reversion to her Skye hacker persona, only now with the ability to cause earthquakes. It’s not that big a stretch, going back to life before SHIELD, but the stakeout and attempted takedown was lame, well below Couson’s usual efforts. From fooling Hive with a hologram to running down too late from a 3rd floor window. Sad.

I didn’t think they were showing him as director. I think he was building the first Life Model Decoy, a standard trope of the Marvel universe. It looked like he was set up in a lab with Fitz to work on furthering his research.

When Hive switched to his natural form I couldn’t help but see Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean. Very distracting.

9

I liked it, but it felt very uneven. Way too much Daisy. The only good part with her was when she begged Hive to take her back. And while I’m thrilled to see Sparky go, having him be the agent who dies was weak.

And the whole treatment of the Mouthbreathers was strange too. We won’t kill them, since they’re SHIELD agents under mind control, except Mac shot one with his shotgun axe.

Fitz killing Giyera was the best part of the episode, IMO. No Icers for him.

Yeah, I found that actually annoying. Clearly just there to tease fans “Oh, look, Fitz has it now! Is he the target? Wait and see!”

[/QUOTE]

Yes, back from season 1.

I don’t think the infection bomb was still a nuke. It was designed to disperse the Inhuman conversion agent, not incinerate it.

I liked it. I disagree that Radcliffe is the new director. Even with his various crimes - why would you make a scientist the director of field agents, and why would he want such a job? I think the hearings he was talking about were to decide what he should be charged with, not confirmation hearings - he said “My name’s been cleared, with a few stipulations.” I think he’s working for SHIELD under supervision, but he’s not the director.

I’m guessing the Life Model Decoy teaser is there so they can bring Ward back once again.

10

Maybe I misunderstood, but the writers have already futzed around with the command structure of SHIELD so many times that clearly it’s their fallback when they don’t have any good ideas for what to do next. So I’m not too optimistic. I’d rather see them go back to episodic, adventure of the week stories, if they can’t come up with a Big Bad, than drive into internal angst and soap opera.

11

So I’m no physician, but I’m pretty sure applying a gas torch to a gunshot wound is not actually going to have favorable consequences.

If that really turns out to be the case, then we need to start figuring out which of the showrunners the actor has dirt on, or whose daughter he kidnapped, or something.

12

You’d think they’d have at least tried a bandage first. Or direct pressure, or one of those things you learn in a Cub scout first aid class.

He definitely wants to come back, and suggested the LMD is there to leave that open too.

13

I’m fine with Ward/Hive returning. It seems like too good a character to kill off eternally. And, of course, in comics no one ever stays dead, so I won’t feel too cheated by it. He is, after all, basically a glorified dustball.

But they should fight another villain first. Give them a full season with no Ward, then bring him back to save the day just as everything is going to hell in the finale. And then the start of the following season, he’s accepted back into the fold as a powered-down Hive (for whatever reason).

14

No, no, no. Have him sit out a season, then at the very end, when it looks like Our Heroes will actually get some rest/satisfaction/laid, Hive returns and kicks over the apple cart once again. Dalton can never play a hero on this show again. Too much baggage plus the fact that as a “good” guy he had all the acting chops of a 2x4. As a “bad” guy he is stellar.

15

There won’t be a following season.
The show has been put in the Tuesday at 10PM death slot and ABC is divesting itself of all other Marvel shows. Fourth season will be it.

16

Agreed, he wasn’t awful as good-Ward, but he certainly excelled in season’s 2 and 3.

17

Hm, well midseason finale then.

Any idea why ABC is doing that? I know that they were scaling things back, hence the death of Most Wanted, but I didn’t realize they were trying to cut the habit entirely.

18

It constantly annoys me that people are still doing channel television. I switched to iTunes and Hulu back in…I don’t know, 2005/6? 11 years later, what TV channels are doing should have almost no bearing on the choices of production companies. :confused:

19

Except it’s channel TV that pays the bills, and money rules over all.

I thought it was a good two-parter. I actually enjoyed the swerves with the cross. It was the writers’ way of saying “We know you all noticed the cross/jacket, so we’re going to have it change hands to keep you guessing.” I saw it less as a pointless endeavor and more as a subtle wink to people like us who comment in message boards about it.

I’m going to miss Ward/Hive/Squadward/Liara T’soni. I thought Dalton acted the hell out of this episode and has actually been a bit of a shining star this season.

Actually, you know what? I’m giving the whole cast acting props. I actually cared about Daisy/Sparky for once and even felt feelings for them when they were doing their goodbye.

Emo Daisy was annoying as always. Why was she soooo affected by “what I did” when she was taken over by Hive? She didn’t really DO all that much. No one important really died (I guess metal man did) so I don’t know what her fuss is about. Then again, I guess it’s good characterization because as annoying as she’s been, she’s quite consistent.

I enjoyed the 6 months later actually. I am interested to see if Daisy being rogue messes any SHIELD plans up next season.

Lastly, was there any significance to the female voice/“I’m giving you a new body” at the end of the episode? Is that a character that I don’t know about? A female Ultron or whatever?

20

That was rather my point… There shouldn’t be money in it anymore.

The ABC problem still seems a bit mysterious. ABC is part of Disney, so they’re not losing money to license Marvel properties. Disney’s trying to consolidate the film and TV divisions under Feige, so I can see not starting anything new, or trying to shut down anything which goes against the canon. But AoS was pretty tightly linked to the movies at the start and hasn’t done anything which strictly conflicts with the movie universe since the two groups stopped talking to one another. And it’s run by Joss Whedon’s brother, and Joss is on good terms with Feige, supposedly.

Granted, I don’t know that AoS strictly needs to continue on endlessly. The writers do seem to be in a hard spot between wanting to have big, world-ending bad guys fighting with superpowered heroes, but not having the budget for the special effects nor the budget for any of the movie actors who portray characters that would logically intervene. Lost Girl always had the same problem. Once it came time for the big showdown between the good guys and the Big Bad, the action always had to take place in one of the standard sets for the show and only the main characters could fight. It ends up all looking like a skirmish more than a great battle. It could never live up to all the hype and expectations for cataclysmic end of days that all the description leading up to it had promised.